


Non Sequitur

by roblingt



Series: Yours, Mine, and... Ours? [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-07
Updated: 2008-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roblingt/pseuds/roblingt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble with time travel is that things don't always happen in the right order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non Sequitur

Jack knew to the second how quickly he could get up to the Plass at the first sound of those engines. He'd practiced. He had one ear open, always, waiting to hear that God had forgiven him.

Ironic, then, that Jack was already walking in the Plass when the wind whipped up to plaster the litter of modernity to the legs of his trousers and lash his hair into writhing spikes. Jack laughed breathlessly at the absurdity of it, all thoughts of having lunch out for a change tossed aside at the sight of that ridiculous blue box forming from nothing in its usual spot before the fountain. "Doctor! Got a minute to --"

And Jack stopped, because as the TARDIS became real he could see that one door was ajar, and on it the gory print of a man's hand. But too dark to _be_ blood, or at least not _human_ blood -- " _Doctor!_ "

No time for subtlety or politeness now, Jack charged into the TARDIS and nearly fell over the staggering Time Lord, leaning heavily on the arm of a young man Jack didn't know as one long-fingered hand clutched uselessly at the spreading raspberry-jam bloom across his chest. Knife, gunshot, hard even to tell, but he wouldn't still be on his feet and talking without that extra heart and more lung redundancy than any other species Jack knew of -- "Just when you think it can't get worse," the Doctor gasped through teeth locked into a bloodstained grin as the brown eyes met Jack's. "Sorry, Jack, I tried --"

"No, no, _no_!" Jack butted the young man out of the way and gathered the falling Time Lord into his arms, heedless of the golden fire beginning to crackle over his skin. "Oh, no. Don't go. Please."

But it couldn't be argued with, this process, implacable as the mystery that drove Jack's weary heart, and in his arms the Doctor arched against him as the fires of regeneration blazed through the slender body Jack had had too little time with, reshaping limbs and features as the price of restoration. Jack closed his eyes against the burning light and buried his face in the crackling hair, weeping with more than pain. Until, at last, the light shining through his eyelids faded, and as the roaring in his ears ebbed he could hear the muffled unfamiliar voice against his shoulder saying, "Leggo, Jack, can't breathe."

 _No, I'm never letting you go again, you foolish_ \-- "Sorry." Jack loosened his hold, just enough to look down into eyes as blue as a summer afternoon, and felt a knife twist in his own solitary heart.

Fingers that were still long but not as fine came up to brush Jack's face. "You're going to be feeling _that_ tomorrow." It wasn't like either of his other voices, more Cardiff than anything Jack could put a name to, and a good timbre to it that probably wouldn't go squeaky under pressure. Jack would miss that.

"Never mind _me_ , what about you?" Jack helped the Time Lord to sit upright. This sandy hair was longer, flopping into his eyes in a way that Jack would have found incredibly endearing at any other moment than this.

"My trousers are too tight. Blimey, that's always annoying. I seem to be broader in the beam all round, is that right?" he added, wriggling his shoulders in his suit.

"You're more like... when we first met." The Doctor grabbed at his ears. "Oh, no, there's no _resemblance_ , it's just... you're solid. I always wanted to take Brown-Eyes home and feed you up right, y'know?"

"I take it 'Brown Eyes' no longer applies, then." Damn, even at a time like this he didn't miss a thing. He pulled a lock of hair as far out in front of his eyes as it would go to inspect it. " _Still_ not ginger. Bugger."

The Time Lord's companion had recovered himself enough by now to kneel on the decking beside them, studying the new features as if he were merely assuring himself of something he'd been expecting. "Do I get an introduction?" Jack asked after a long moment of feeling that he had suddenly been dropped out of an ongoing conversation.

"No." Well, that hadn't changed, anyway. Not that Jack blamed the Doctor for that, considering how much better his taste in companions seemed to be these days (and Jack didn't mind downgrading himself by the comparison), and he wondered just where the Doctor had picked up this latest specimen and whether there were any more like him at home: dark hair pulled back into a knot, coffee skin, eyes like living chocolate -- Jack had just enough psychic sensitivity himself to grasp that there were more unspoken communications crackling between the two, and the young man cocked his head as if acknowledging a point well made and silently took himself off somewhere, leaving the Doctor in Jack's custody for the moment.

"I have to get out of these clothes before I suffocate," the Doctor said, pulling his tie off over his head and letting Jack take it out of his hands. "And you've got some second-degree burns coming up there. That'll need seeing to before you go. -- Trade you." This last to the companion, who had suddenly reappeared with a cup of tea. "Oh, you _are_ getting weird. Go help Jack with those burns. No, probably not, but I _have_ to get out of this suit." The Doctor chuckled at something mysterious to Jack and went off in the general direction of the wardrobe with the tea in hand.

"I _can_ talk," the young man said, startling Jack with a low voice filled with an edge of barely checked laughter. "It's just that I could never talk as fast as _him_ so it was hardly worth bothering to try and get a word in edgewise. Be interesting to see if _that's_ changed at all."

"The him I knew first was a little quieter," Jack said absently. A hot, young, primarily telepathic companion, well, that was certainly different... "But it was still an uphill battle. Um... you seemed prepared for all of that."

This got Jack an uncomprehending shrug. "Why wouldn't I have been?"

"...Huh. Maybe he finally did learn his lesson about warning people about the whole regeneration thing instead of just springing it on them." A puzzled look from the brown eyes. Jack had the oddest feeling that he'd seen them somewhere before, now he thought about it.

The companion reached into a pocket and produced a device not at all unlike a sonic screwdriver, and played it over Jack's face and hands. "That's arrested the worst of it. There's some deep-tissue damage, but nothing _you_ shouldn't be able to handle." The dark eyes met Jack's, and again he had that haunted feeling that he should know them. Maybe if he pulled away the knot to see if the rest of that hair would fall away into loose ringlets like the few strands curling around his face --

" _Jack_." The Doctor stood in the doorway, dressed now in an old-fashioned frock coat and -- jeans? Well, the fashion sense and lack thereof seemed to be a constant, anyway. With the hair tied back like that it made Jack think a little of his own days back in the wild west, the look of a cowboy who'd put on his good coat to meet company.

"How _do_ you do that?"

"I know you, Jack." The new mouth looked very well suited to smiling, at least. "Better than it would be safe for you to know, at this point. This isn't really when I meant to set down, it's just that the emergency return can be a little imprecise. I obviously haven't had much occasion to test it under actual conditions, after all."

"I'm touched to think that here is where you consider your safe haven," Jack said.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time, to have the TARDIS snap back to the Rift if anything went seriously pear-shaped on me. Better than running out of petrol on some moon, anyway."

"That certainly looked like it went an orchard of pear-shaped for you, whatever it was."

The Doctor's shoulders sagged. "We'll be at leisure to discuss it some day, I hope," the Time Lord said. "But you've probably seen too much for now as it is." Before Jack had quite realized it, he'd been gently but firmly walked back through the console room and deposited just outside of the TARDIS. "Thank you, though. For... being there." With an unreadable look from the new eyes, the Doctor disappeared into his ship.

The companion stretched up to kiss Jack on the forehead; "See you soon, Uncle Jack." And slammed the doors in his face, but not before Jack heard a distinctly disapproving snort.

 _Well, if you were trying to mess with me to throw me off from a paradox, it worked_ , Jack thought, too startled even to back away as the engines roared to life. _That one's a keeper, all right. Both of them. Wonder when this was for him, anyway_...

And when, much, much later, Jack found the strip of fabric that had once been a tie in his pocket, stained dark with blood no laboratory on this world would be able to make sense of, the sensible thing would have been to burn it, or to file it away so deep in the archives that it would never be found, but somehow, that never did happen, did it, Jack.


End file.
